Here’s a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don’t worry, be happy…
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy…
THIS LITTLE GEM by Bobby McFerrin is the perfect tonic for those among us who’ve made it a habit to worry ourselves to death. Like guilt, worry is a useless emotion – we can worry all we want or feel guilty all we want, but neither will change anything. Guilt immobilizes us in the present because of something we’ve done in the past; worry immobilises us in the present because we obsess about something in the future. They are opposite ends of the same erroneous zone, according to American psychiatrist Dr Wayne W. Dyer (Read Are you prone to feeling guilty? Stop… right now!).
Waste of time
In his 1976 bestseller Your Erroneous Zones, Dr Dyer defines worry as “being immobilised in the present as a result of things that are going or not going to happen in the future”. According to him, various cultures encourage worrying by equating it with caring. The message we get is if we care about someone, we must worry about him/her. “Thus, you prove your love by doing an appropriate amount of worrying at the correct time,” he writes.
“Much of your worry concerns things over which you have no control. You can worry all you want about war, or the economy, or possible illness, but worry won’t bring peace or prosperity or health…. You can spend the rest of your life, beginning right now, worrying about the future, and no amount of your worry will change a thing,” he adds.
Neurotic payoffs
Some of our typical worry behaviours include our children, our health, our jobs, having a heart attack, accidents, what others will think, our parents dying, money, getting old etc. There are neurotic dividends we receive for worrying, which we must understand if we are eliminate it. Here are some payoffs listed by Dr Dyer:
(i) “Worry is a present-moment activity. Thus, by using your current life being immobilised over a future time in your life, you are able to escape the now and whatever it is in the now that threatens you,” he writes.
Dr Dyer illustrates this with an example from his life. In the summer of 1974, he was in Turkey teaching and writing a book while his family was in the US. He loved writing but found it a very difficult and lonely pursuit that required much self-discipline. Every morning, he would sit at his typewriter but find his thoughts straying to his daughter and her safety. He would worry and think and worry some more, and time would fly – saving him the difficult struggle with writing. “A terrific payoff indeed,” he writes.
(ii) Worry helps us avoid the risk of taking action. We use it as the reason for our immobility. “I can’t do a thing, I’m just too worried” – is a common statement. Worrying allows us to sit around and think, and not do anything.
(iii) Worry helps us prove to the world that we care. “A handsome dividend, although lacking in logical healthy thinking,” writes Dr Dyer.
(iv) Worry allows us to justify self-defeating behaviour. If we smoke when we are worried, we can use worry to avoid quitting smoking. So, it helps us to avoid change.
Six strategies
Dr Dyer has listed some strategies to help eliminate worry. Some of these are:
(i) Start seeing the present as a time to live rather than obsess about the future. When you worry, ask yourself what you’re trying to avoid by worrying. Then attack whatever you’re avoiding. “The best antidote to worry is action,” writes Dr Dyer.
(ii) Ask yourself repeatedly if anything will change if you worry about it.
(iii) Set aside 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening as time-slots for you to worry. Control your thoughts and put off worrying till the designated “worry time”. You’ll soon see the stupidity of it all.
(iv) Make a “worry sheet” of all the things you’ve obsessed about in the last six months. Evaluate if your worrying has been productive in any way. “You’ll soon see that worry is a doubly wasteful activity. It does nothing to alter the future. And the projected catastrophe often turns out to be minor, or even a blessing when it arrives.”
(v) Ask yourself what’s the worst that could happen if you stop worrying and what are the chances of it happening. You’ll soon see how absurd your worry is.
(vi) Start challenging your fears with productive action and behaviour. Dr Dyer mentions the case of a woman who was targeted by growling wild dogs during a vacation on an island off Connecticut in the US. She decided to take on her fear of being bitten by them by arming herself with a stone and not reacting when the dogs chased her. She refused to back down even when the dogs charged at her. Soon, the dogs gave up and ran away.
“While I am not advocating dangerous behaviour, I do believe that an effective challenge to a fear or worry is the most productive way to eradicate it from your life,” he writes.
Conclusion
“But the most effective weapon… for wiping out worry is your own determination to banish this neurotic behaviour from your life,” concludes Dr Dyer.